Published at CounterPunch on September 27, 2024
I grew up in a tight-knit Jewish community in a small New England town. The textile mills that employed many had long since left for warmer places and finally overseas. The business community in which many Jewish shopkeepers had businesses was also in decline, but as an adolescent I did not notice.
Being Jewish brought me a sense of pride. My mother was involved in local and national politics and was a co-coordinator for both the Eugene McCarthy campaign for president in 1968, and the George McGovern campaign for president in 1972. Our synagogue, once a thriving center of religious celebrations, was also on the decline, as the post World War II era saw some leave for many reasons: some for status and some for work.
When my mother wrote a fictionalized version of our community, Tales of an American Shtetl (2011), she mistakenly depicted the Israeli flag as the Jewish flag in one of her stories about a holiday celebration at our synagogue. There was almost no way of knowing about the Nakba during the years of the 1950s through the 1970s. It was the peace movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s that introduced me to the issue of the Palestinian people and the territory in which they lived. When I argued the cause of a Palestinian state in the living room of our home during that era, an aunt looked at me as if I had more than two heads.
The current conflagration in the Middle East, with Israel acting with no constraints with full US backing and the backing of some US allies, violates rule after rule of established international laws of war such as that of proportionality, the mass punishment of civilian populations, the murder of civilians, and the denial of humanitarian aid. The list goes on and on and the fact that the US could end this catastrophe in a hour adds fuel to the rogues in the Netanyahu government, the war criminal Netanyahu being the worst. The weapons manufacturers and the Israel lobby are doing well. The latter hounded two Congresspeople out of office.
It’s apparent now that the two Intifadas, as well as the two-state or one-state resolution to the murderous Israeli apartheid regime, is intent on a decisive so-called “mowing the lawn” in both Gaza and the West Bank. It is doubtful that Israel can mow the lawn in southern Lebanon now, but they can and are causing death.
Even in the face of the propaganda of self-hate and anti-Semitism on the part of the warmongers and their fellow travelers, I held the values of repairing the world and not doing evil unto others as core beliefs of the secular ideals of my heritage. Now, it seems that the relentless attacks of the murderers who want to set the entire Middle East on fire are so different from me that we are unrecognizable to one another. It is as if Netanyahu and his gang of thugs are one with the ultra right among Democrats and Republicans who want full-spectrum dominance over the entire globe as if it was their plaything. They have ruined the secular roots of my religion that I held dear for so long!
Protest against genocide in the Gaza Strip on the streets in the US is met with the militarized police and batons and pepper spray. Colleges and universities either call in the police, or penalize pro-Palestinian protesters with serious academic sanctions in this nation where once protest on campuses was held as sacred. The mass media aids and abets the sickening drumbeats of war. Will the media side with the lunatics in Israel in an Israeli attack against Iran, which could bring the whole show down on civilization?
A few decades ago a critic of my stand in an article on the freedom of the Palestinian people said in a side-by-side column that I was an angry man. That was an accurate assessment!
Ruining My Religion